Dumbarton Manager Jim Duffy has continued to put his squad together ahead of next season with a further three players agreeing to stay at the club whilst another nine departed.

Club Captain Stuart Carswell, striker Robert Jones and forward PJ Crossan will all be turning out for the Sons again next season, whilst the nine leaving included player-of-the-year Kyle Hutton and 2019/20 top scorer Isaac Layne.

Hutton is expected to join up with former Dumbarton Boss Stevie Aitken at Lowland League outfit East Kilbride and Layne has signed for League One rivals Peterhead.

Also making their departure from the C&G Systems Stadium are Joe McKee, Conor Brennan, Lewis Crawford, Ryan Tierney, Callum Wilson, Jai Quitongo and Jordan Pettigrew.

McKee was Sons’ most creative player last season, picking up 15 assists and scoring two goals, whilst Brennan was ever present in the Dumbarton goal and registered a joint league high of 101 saves and kept seven clean sheets.

Crawford, in his first season in Senior football, made 14 appearances at right-back and kept a clean sheet on two occasions whilst Tierney netted twice after joining from Hamilton last summer.

Wilson made four appearances after joining from Partick Thistle in January, making his debut at Pittodrie against Aberdeen in the Scottish Cup, whilst Pettigrew kept one clean sheet in his three appearances after joining from Livingston and Quitongo scored once after joining in January.

The comings and goings mean that Sons are left with nine bodies signed up for the 2020/21 campaign and Duffy is glad to have less of a turnaround after last summer saw him left with just three players from the previous season.

Speaking to the Reporter, the 61-year-old has revealed that he is pleased to have kept much of the defence together as he now turns his attention to bringing in new players. He said: “It was important to try and get a nucleus of the side signed up, which I always wanted to do anyway.

“I’ve only had one pre-season at the club, which was last year, and we never really had any signed players up until the last week, so I felt it was important this time around to try and have a nucleus to build from.

“So from that point of view and having three of the guys at the back in particular, then that’s important because it gives you a base to work from and any football club will tell you that if you have that then hopefully the rest of the players will fall into place.

“It will be difficult and we understand that, it’s a very tough league, but we are delighted that those boys were back on board.”